The difference between sentences that are evaluated by linguistic significance alone and sentences that are evaluated by linguistic significance and other circumstances

Résumé du document

Significant differences among sentences of natural language does exist. It is not a matter of theoretical philosophy or theoretical linguistics but simply common sense. The difference I would like to focus on the sentences that are evaluated by linguistic significance alone and sentences that are evaluated by linguistic significance and (other) circumstances. In this chapter, I shall introduce the distinction and I will test it by investigating simple sentences involving proper names in the subject position, such as ?Diego Maradona exists' and ?Diego Maradona runs'. Later on, I will add some remarks about the distinction introduced. As a preliminary to my point of view, let me start with some pre-theoretical remarks. ?I am, I exist' «is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind» (Descartes, 1641: ***). ?I am sitting in front of the fire', instead, is not necessarily true every time I utter it. Descartes in the second of the Meditations on First Philosophy brings our attention to the difference between these two cases. I do not want to do any Cartesian exegesis concerning this famous passage.

Extraits

[...] Black, M. (eds.) 1952. Translation from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege, Oxford: Blackwell. Gunderson, K. (ed.) 1975. Language, Mind and Knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Kant, I Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Engl. Trans. Critique of Pure Reason, New York, Palgrave MacMillan: 2003. [...]

[...] This implies that he has to investigate some other circumstance besides the linguistic significance of ‘Cicero' and of be' to evaluate the sentence. But it is hard to figure out which others circumstances he has to look for other than looking if there is an individual who is in the suitable historical connection with both the occurrences of the name ‘Cicero'. Such a connection is available to the Omniscient Observer of History as long as he goes back to the reference of both the occurrences of the name, achieving the first step in the semantics of the sentence. [...]

[...] In fact, despite these variations in informativeness, what a sentence means does not vary. As such informativeness is not a semantical notion.[25] I have not held that ‘Cicero is Cicero' and ‘Cicero is Tully' are alike under every respect but just that they are semantically alike, i.e. both are evaluated by linguistic significance alone. Therefore, Frege's observation does not urge to revise this result. Now, let's deal with Russell, whose considerations on existential sentences appear to clash with my claim that sentences like ‘Diego Maradona exists' are evaluated by linguistic significance alone. [...]

[...] Now, for my purposes, it does not matter whether Russell is right or wrong on this issue. I just want to notice that the examples we are dealing with do not contain any empty name. Therefore it is pointless to appeal to such considerations to dismiss the thesis that sentences like ‘Diego Maradona exists' are evaluated by linguistic significance alone. The other issue Russell raises is: at which conditions a simple expression of the language occurring in subject position can be used as a name? [...]

[...] Therefore ‘Diego Maradona runs' is a sentence evaluated by linguistic significance and (other) circumstances. This result is not surprising at all. Let's deal with the other sentence at issue, namely ‘Diego Maradona exists'. As we saw, to evaluate the sentence the Omniscient Observer of History has to settle the linguistic significance of the simple symbols that occur in the sentence. Now, ‘Diego Maradona' stands for Diego Maradona and exist' for the property of existing. Can the Omniscient Observer of History evaluate the sentence already at this stage or he has to investigate other circumstances like in the previous case? [...]